Sunshine Week — It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint

National Sunshine Week is March 10-16, 2024. MRSC’s Managing Attorney, Flannary Collins, wrote about its history and implications last year in her blog, It’s Sunshine Week Somewhere.

During Sunshine Week there is an increased (and well-deserved) focus on transparency in government operations. Several organizations around the state, including WashCOG - Washington Coalition for Open Government and TVW, as well as print and online media will be reporting on and sharing their perspectives on how Washington’s state and local governments are doing in this area.

Washington state residents expect their government agencies to operate in the open, and when governments fail to do so, the people and the press and the courts will hold them accountable. As I read the news (and the reports of court cases), government gets it right sometimes, and government gets it wrong sometimes. When government does get it wrong, the courts let us know when it appears to be deliberate and when it appears to be inadvertent. I’m not going to rehash all of that here. What I want to do is to highlight what local government agencies are doing (or trying to do) to comply with the letter and the spirit of our transparency laws.

Resources for the Public

The Public Records Act (PRA) and the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA) were originally adopted in the 1970s, well before council meetings were televised and records were digitized. The leaps forward in technology since then have not always been met by accompanying leaps in the laws surrounding transparency or in local agencies’ ability to take full advantage of this technology. On the OPMA side of the house, most agencies are “encouraged” but not required to make an audio or video recording (or to stream online) of meetings of their governing bodies and to post those on their websites.

Starting June 24, 2024, RCW 42.30.035 requires school districts to make audio recordings of meetings “at which final action is taken or formal testimony is accepted,” to maintain these recordings for one year, and to make them publicly available. It will be interesting to see the effects of this new law. Will people request the recordings? Is a one-year retention long enough? Too long? Should this requirement be expanded to other government agencies, and if so, what is the cost in staff and other resources to do so? Time will tell.

But even though it is not yet required, many agencies that have the resources do follow the recommendation to record meetings and make the recordings available, or to stream or broadcast meetings, or both.

Some agencies, such as the City of Auburn, integrate video streaming with their agenda document management systems. Others, such as the Tacoma School District, use ‘open source’ accounts like YouTube to stream and archive meetings. Still others, like Yakima County, maintain a robust local government channel. These government channels originally started as cable channels, but many of them have adapted to streaming. For example, Yakima County allows attendance at county public meetings via Zoom, but recordings of these meetings are features on its public access channel’s website.

On the PRA side, many agencies, like the City of Walla Walla, have adopted electronic document management systems. These systems often have an option to create a portal that allows members of the public to access agency documents online. Visitors to Walla Walla’s Public Records webpage will find that the city uses a combination of publicly accessible online archives and a public records request portal to make records available.

Training

State law requires all elected officials and public records officers to be trained on their obligations under the PRA, OPMA, and the Records Retention Act not later than 90 days after they take office. MRSC, in partnership with the Association of Washington Cities, provides this initial online training through our PRA/OPMA E-Learning Courses. The Washington State Attorney General’s Office also has online open government training. Many agencies use a combination of these online trainings and in-person training conducted by local staff.

In addition to this initial training, many local government staff, and elected officials participate in ongoing training on various aspects of the OPMA and the PRA. In addition to MRSC’s in-house training, organizations around the state such as the Washington Association of Public Records Officers, Washington State Association of Counties, Washington Association of County Officers, Association of Washington Public Heath Districts, Washington Public Ports Association, Washington Public Utilities Districts Association, Washington State Transit Association, Washington Municipal Clerks Association, and the Washington Association of Commissioners/ Council Clerks all provide ongoing training and resources for their members.

Can I Call a Friend?

The answer is an enthusiastic “Yes!” For those of y’all that love numbers, here’s some fun statistics about how local governments spent 2023 constantly striving to improve their understanding of the requirements of our transparency laws.

• Over 2,200 people registered for our PRA and OPMA related trainings, and an additional 429 registered for our full-day PRA workshops.
• MRSC answered 422 inquiries about the PRA and 270 inquiries about the OPMA.
• Our staff and guest contributors also wrote 11 blog posts last year on the PRA or the OPMA, which were read roughly 12,000 times.

Last but not least, folks appear to have spent a lot of time on our website:

• PRA webpages (including electronic records & law enforcement records series) garnered 45,300 views in 2023.
• OPMA webpages garnered 22,000 views in 2023.

Visits to our PRA and OPMA webpages accounted for about one out of every eight views on our website over the past year.

Conclusion

We’re not naive here at MRSC. Local governments large and small still have challenges. Cost, work priorities, sheer volume, and yes, sometimes a disinclination to let the public see what’s under the hood, all factor into how well a particular agency complies with the OPMA and the PRA.

But I’m encouraged by the sincere effort we do see from government officials and staff to comply. We’ll keep writing and training, and the open government advocates will continue their good work of reminding agencies of their responsibility to govern openly. Together I hope we’ll all continue to improve.

The author is grateful to his colleagues Jacob Rice, Gaby Nicas, and Steve Hawley for crunching the stats for this blog.